


Stars in the Rearview

by PaxDuane



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Force-Sensitive Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Found Family, Good Parent Jango Fett, Good Teacher Jango Fett, Heist, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Jango Fett, Original Alien Species - Freeform, Original GAR Battalion, Slice of Life, Specialist GAR Battalion, Spy - Freeform, Trans Clone Troopers (Star Wars), fun with chemistry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxDuane/pseuds/PaxDuane
Summary: Jedi Knight Bala Ibis was assigned at the beginning of the Clone Wars to a battalion of specialists to track down the fugitive Jango Fett. She finds that, even though she expected the assignment to be difficult, it's very different than she expected. Especially as she connects with both Fett and her Alpha-batch clone commander, Priest, and finds connections to her missing former Master.While on her mission to find Fett, with the hope of bringing him on board the GAR contractor boat, she also finds herself and her battalion of twenty-something infiltration specialists with access to heavy weaponry and chips on their shoulders dragged into the breadth of the war, playing off of notable figures like Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi but also butting heads with old "improv" collogues of her Master's like Master Mace Windu and, disturbingly enough, Count Dooku.
Relationships: Jango Fett & Original Clone Trooper Character(s), Jango Fett & Original Jedi Character(s), Original Clone Trooper Character(s)/Original Jedi Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Stars in the Rearview

For all Bala’s Master taught her about the place of war in both the Galaxy and for the Order, she couldn’t help but go, “But not like this, Master, it can’t be like this.”

Her Master wasn’t here, though. That person was out, unrecalled from a long-term mission, in the wide reaches of the Galaxy. So Bala, still only a few years into Knighthood, found herself the general of a battalion.

Captain Static, the one tech expert of her battalion that didn’t prefer explosives to splicing, was across from her in the destroyer, going through the information they had about the battalion’s first assignment. Of the few officers that grouped around her so far, Static was the friendliest. He had heartbeat lines shaved into the sides of his head and four tally marks in aqua under his left eye.

She’d adopted the color for their battalion quickly, since it reminded her of her Master anyways. Most of the clones quickly adopted the color for tattoos, armor, and, in one fascinating case for being stuck in the destroyer, hair color.

She had a feeling that Lye, one of the clones who had a taste for chemical engineering, had something to do with that one.

She liked most of the clones she’d interacted with so far. The only one she didn’t…

“You look like you’re going to glare a hole into the door,” Static says. “Just because Priest decided you shouldn’t talk with the crew so much on our way there doesn’t mean you need to stay here.”

Commander Priest, from what Bala could gather, was the oldest clone on the destroyer—an Alpha batch clone trained directly by the fugitive bounty hunter Jango Fett. Their target.

Yeah, even if she didn’t think he was heavy handed, closed off, and overly sarcastic, she’d be suspicious of him.

“I am not staying here just because the Commander locked me out, figuratively speaking,” Bala replies, narrowing her eyes at Static who just smiles genially. “I felt this was the quickest area to meditate on our upcoming engagement.”

Static raises an eyebrow. “You get more grammatical when you’re annoyed. And you’re not meditating.”

“How would you know what meditating looks like?” she shoots back, feeling bad almost before the first word is all the way past her lips. She sits back, pursing her lips.

Static doesn’t seem bothered, though, because he just laughs. “Because Priest and the other Alphas all meditate. They even taught some of the cadets from us younger batches.”

“That implies that Fett meditates,” she observed.

Static actually looks up from the datapad he’s flipping through files on at that. “I guess it does. Never thought about that, but I guess he’s spent so much time alone in space that it makes sense.”

It’s a reminder of the humanity of their target. Fett didn’t go along with the Separatists, so far as they know now, but she’s still been thinking him of an enemy. He managed to fight Master Windu to a breaking point, where he got away just before Windu could kill him, but his history is soaked in tragedy.

Bala can’t imagine the loneliness of having all of your people killed around you.

Still, he’s dangerous. She has a full battalion instead of just a strike team that would usually go after a singular target because of how dangerous he is.

She sighs and stands up, stretching her arms up to the ceiling. “I really do need to meditate on this. We’ll be at Lothal in two days; I can’t put it off any longer.”

She’s about to head to her room when Priest comes grumbling out of the command deck area, where they’re all planning the destroyer’s course and talking about airspace—all stuff she knows about thanks to her Master’s friendship with Master Plo Koon.

Priest pauses when he notices her and Static, face going blank with practiced patience. He looks the most like Fett out of the clones she’s memorized so far. Most of them have easily visible tattoos or have deviated their hairstyles, but Priest looks like Fett, walks like Fett, fights like Fett. She knows he does have tattoos, though, because when she first walked onto the destroyer a few months ago, he had his undershirt off thanks to some of his brothers dumping water on him. Across his back lay an intricate set of lines that were an esoteric map of the Galaxy. She’d recognized it because her Master had the map the tattoo was based on above the couch in their rooms at the Temple for a long time—until they left for their last mission and passed it directly to her.

“You didn’t have to wait up here,” Priest tells Static. “I’m sure they could use your intel.”

Static smirks at him. “I was enjoying the General’s company. You could stand to learn to.” With that, the tech specialist dodges around him to duck into the pilot’s room, fleeing any older sibling retribution.

Priest rolls his eyes before he remembers Bala is there, going quickly back to that blank look. Bala sneers at him and stalks off, determined to go to her room and meditate about what kind of fight they’re about to get into and maybe on her aggravation with Priest. Maybe.

Behind her, she hears him sigh. “General,” he starts, taking long steps to catch up with her. When she speeds up, he calls again.

She stops short, taking no small amount of satisfaction with how he nearly runs into her. “What.”

He narrows his eyes and crosses his arms. “You don’t have to act like a child.”

She gives him a wide-eyed look, trying to impress on him that he can’t be serious in saying she’s the one acting like a child. She is, yes, acting like a child not even out of the creche, but she’s not going to let him treat her like one without a reason. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

He growls. “Whoever knighted you was out of their mind.”

She’s already punched him in the face by the time she’s processed the words, still holding her fist in the air as he ducks over, hands covering his nose. Horror dawns on her that he’s not her enemy, she shouldn’t be taking her anger out on him. Still, the words that flow out her mouth are tinged by that anger. “Never belittle my Master like that again, and get yourself to a medic, Commander.”

She turns on her heel and rushes to her room as the horror overwhelms her. She locks the door to her room behind her and hiccups, trying to keep sobs from pouring out.

Her Master had seen that anger and taught her how to turn it into righteousness, into something used to protect instead of to hurt. She couldn’t blame the Commander, no matter that he was the only one she’d met in years that tested that practiced knowledge. It was on her for not processing it, for lashing out against someone on her own side.

She slides, her back against the door, to the ground. Tears and snot burn her face with salt as she tries to wipe them away, tries to muffle the sobs. The whole room feels dark and small, just like the day in the creche that her Master first found her. Despite the older Jedi being off-planet, meditating, Bala had found her.

Somehow, she drifts into that same meditative state she had been in then.

This time, she ends up in a ship, across from a man who looks quite a bit like Priest. He’s humming and cooking, occasionally looking out at a young boy asleep on a pallet in another area of the ship, before he notices her.

Fett frowns and leans against the counter of the ship kitchen, tilting his head as he studies her. It’s so unlike Priest that it makes her crying settle down. It’s still humiliating, being seen by someone in this state, but it’s not the panic that she first had thinking that she’d wandered somewhere with Priest in the room.

“Sorry,” she hiccups. “I didn’t mean to get here.”

Fett shakes his head. “I doubt you could get here if you were actually trying to.” He cracks a smile, there. “What’s wrong, Jetii’ika?”

She scowls because, for all she hasn’t caught much on to the language, she knows that’s the Mando’a word usually used for a Padawan, not a full Knight like her. Still, it’s not like it can hurt her chances of finding him if he knows she’s a little ball of rage. “I got angry at someone on my side, and I lashed out—I hit them.”

That makes Fett laugh, soft but still noticeable. “You hit them? Not Force-choked them, not shoved them into a wall, not drilled into their mind?”

She lets out a snuffly little giggle. When he puts it like that, she guesses it’s not as bad. It’s not such a break of boundaries. She did something that any of the clones could do to her, if she weren’t their superior or if they acted without thinking like she had. “Yeah I just… He said I was acting like a child, and then…then he said my Master was out of their mind when they Knighted me. I couldn’t… _No one_ can talk about my Master like that,” she tells him, venom in her last sentence.

He stops laughing and stares at her, looking all the while like when Priest inspects the troopers when they’ve gotten into some trouble. “If anyone had said that about my buir, I probably would have done more than hit them, my side or not.”

“Master would be disappointed that I hit them, though.”

“So would my buir.” Fett cracks another smile at that.

She pauses for a long moment. “You’re Force-sensitive,” she realizes.

“So are you,” he replies, like it’s just as expected for him to be as she is. “Jetiise aren’t special in that.”

She hesitantly nods. “You’re right, I just forget sometimes. They’re my family, my whole world. This is the first time I’ve really stayed in close quarters with people who aren’t Jedi. And with them all calling me General, it’s just so different even than with normal citizens I’ve interacted with. I’m so off-balance.”

“It was one of my ade you hit, then? One of them that insulted your Master?”

Bala huffs. “Yeah, Commander Priest.”

The snort that Fett is unexpected, for both of them judging by the look on his face. Then he shakes his head again. “No wonder you’re having trouble with him.”

She narrows her eyes, not at him but at the statement, trying to puzzle it out. Yes, Fett trained Priest, but that doesn’t exactly correlate to why she’d have trouble with him.

Then she blinks a few times, the realization hitting her about the face. “He’s Force-sensitive too?”

Fett grins, wild and feral as the Force. “There you have it, Alor’ika. Now, it feels like Boba is waking up. I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” he says, winking at her.

And then she’s back in her room, on the destroyer, with all sorts of information. Not only is her Commander a Force-sensitive clone, something no one in the Order knew was possible, the more pressing information is that Fett isn’t on the planet they’re heading to.

She rushes to the pilot’s area, not bothering to wipe the remaining tear-tracks off her face, until she remembers she told Priest to go to a medic. She changes direction to the medical bay, passing concerned looking clones as she rushes in to find Priest and one of the medics, Sixers.

“Fett isn’t on Lothal,” she tells them, shoulders heaving from the exertion of running so far, so hard, after crying.

Priest, a bandage across his nose, gapes at her. She can’t help but be a little relieved it makes him look less like Fett.

“And Commander,” she starts, then pauses as the floor warps under her.

His eyes sharpen when she doesn’t continue, his mouth clicking shut into a frown.

“General, are you okay?” Sixers asks, crossing over and putting a hand on her shoulder. “You look like you’re going to--.”

Everything goes black.

###

Bala wakes up to the beeping of a monitor and Priest asleep contorted in the chair next to her, the medbay lights dimmed for the Lothal night cycle.

“What happened?” she asks groggily, sensing one of the medics nearby.

Captain Crow, the CMO, fills her vision. “You scared Sixers half to death is what you did.”

She winces—Sixers is one of her favorite medics. “Sorry.”

Crow hums, leaning over to unhook an IV from her. “You’re blood pressure dropped suddenly. Any idea why?”

“Cried too long, fell into meditation, went a bit too hard on the meditation, jumped up and ran to the medbay to reveal infor…mation…I…found?” She stares at him, squinting at the swirled tattoos along his temple. Her jaw works as she tries to process what she’s sensing.

“General?” Crow asks, glancing at her.

She resolves to ask Priest, because he’s the only one he has conformation of. “Yeah, I jumped up and ran to the medbay to pass on intelligence.”

Crow sighs. “Jetiiise.” He turns away and then returns with a ration bar. “Eat.”

She scowls but slowly consumes the dry, smell-of-fruit flavored bar while Crow pokes Priest awake.

Priest shoots up, nearly braining himself on the chair he’s on. “What?” he asks gruffly.

“General’s up,” Crow says, tone sardonic.

Priest turns to her slowly. “Never,” he hisses, “Do that again.”

“I will attempt it,” she promises blandly. Crow snickers.

“Shut,” the commander says, aiming a finger at the CMO.

Crow looks both innocent and smug, which Bala finds impressive.

Priest sighs. “Wherever you got your intel, you were right. When we checked in right after you passed out, Fett was noted to have left Lothal twelve hours before.”

“Yeah,” Bala says, “I kind of meditated into his ship.”

Both clones pause, lips pursed, and stare at her, blinking like they’re trying to make a vision vanish.

“What?” Priest asks, voice tight.

“I do that. Didn’t expect to do it though,” she admits.

Both of them sigh heavily with a joint, “Jetiise.”

Should she make it worse? She should make it worse. Which way, though? She could bring up the Force sensitive clone issue, or… “I think he adopted me?”

Priest looks like he wishes he _had_ brained himself waking up. Crow just looks tired.

Bala pats their hands comfortingly.

###

Bala signs off with Master Windu and sighs. She’s not sure if she’s loud or projecting because Priest sticks his head in the little room off the bridge that is set up with her holoconference table.

“Bad?” he asks.

“No one knows where Fett is going,” Bala explains. “So we’ve got orders to continue on to Lothal to help Master Gallia’s troops.” She pauses. “Can we talk about something important?”

“Not here,” he says, “Honestly we shouldn’t talk much over here.”

She frowns at him, but follows as he leads her out and away from the bridge to the bunkrooms. “Are there bugs in my briefing room?”

“No but the last time any of the navy nat’borns showed up we ended up finding a ton everywhere. We left a couple on the bridge and it’s just close enough to possibly be a problem. But knowing means they’re less likely to try and plant more and they’re great for controlling what information goes out.”

Bala grimaces. “That’s fair.” She lets them into her room and sits on the bed so Priest can take the chair. “So… Something Fett told me. Or…led me to?”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

Bala has to _work_ to keep herself from rolling her eyes. “You’re Force-sensitive.”


End file.
